Quality is the key in Advertising Outsourcing.

In today’s dynamic business environment, advertising is one of the fastest growing industries globally. More so, because technology is enabling its diversification into a variety of platforms including online, social media, digital marketing, experimental ambient, along with the traditional ones. To cater to the rising demands of clients, more and more agencies are partnering with Creative Process Outsourcing houses (CPO)in India to provide better services at reasonable costs.

One of the biggest questions that need to be addressed before one partners with a CPO is that of ‘quality’. Advertising being a much customized solution needs to maintain the quality of thought and execution throughout its service platter. When this responsibility is shifted to a team offshore, aren’t there chances of the quality getting diluted in the process?

Your concerns are valid, which is why CPOs has special procedures in place to ensure that the quality of work that is being delivered to you is not just up to the mark but also agrees with your region’s domestic sensitivities and contexts.

A typical CPO would follow a five-stage procedure for quality control in their deliverable.

Templatised briefing formats, designed to capture all essential information within a frame of reference that is relevant to the target customer of your advertising agency.

Regular interactions between the account managers on both the sides via web conferencing to ensure the quality of Work in Progress.

Timely attendance of the creative heads of the on shore and off shore teams to oversee the progress and taking note of client’s inputs, feedbacks and required changes at every stage.

All creative outputs produced at the CPO go through an internal multi-stage review process to ensure the zero-tolerance level of quality control.

Final creative output is then sent to the client in a ready-to-use format.

Standard operations in most CPOs also include bi-weekly conference calls with the agency management for sharing project updates.

India has been a hub of outsourcing for a couple of decades now. From the IT sector, the outsourced duties are now shifting to other industries as well. Advertising agencies being one of the foremost organisations to provide outsourced support to firms in the Middle East and West.

“India has the experience, the resources and the creative talent – just what clients are looking for,” says Arvind Sharma, Managing Director, Leo Burnett, India.

“The Indian thought process is better tuned to the idea of a global village,” says Mistry. “We have the strength of talent because of good business schools, and we have the strength of the English language.”

Working with a Creative Process Outsourcing House in India, agencies can confidently take client projects irrespective of their current service portfolio. The CPO only focuses on creative production, hires and sets up the best-in-class resources that are skilled across the required domains. This also saves the agency, the additional costs of hiring and maintaining a new team.

By outsourcing non-core projects, adaptations and sudden workloads to an offshore Creative House, agencies are increasingly exploring the largely untapped SME sector. Moreover, with a wise distribution of work to the CPOs they can save upto 50% of their creative production cost. As the agencies’ core business is delivering high quality creative solutions, diversifying often leads to a higher dependence on freelancers or expensive internal resources doing the job of junior level resources. A CPO clearly provides a dependable, customized and economical solution for diversification and expansion by ensuring greater efficiency, improved bottom lines, faster turnaround and better resource deployment to an agency.

How can CPOs help agencies tap into the SME sector?

What benefits can a CPO help agencies enjoy in this sector?

How can an agency make the best use of a CPO partnership?

Find answers to all these questions and more in our following posts on Outsourcing Creatives.